Thursday, September 8, 2011

It's My Birthday

Today is my special day. I'm sure that Glogirly will be showering me with cards and gifts. I can't wait to check the mail for greetings from my friends and followers. I expect I may even get a few kind words from Gloman. After all, it was just six years ago today that Gloman brought me home to the townhouse and gave me to Glogirly. I guess it was a pretty big deal. Not just because I'm such a smart and good looking cat, but because it was Gloman and Glogirly's wedding anniversary and I was the gift. I've always thought it curious that someone as anti-cat as Gloman, a true dog-person really, would adopt me and give me to his girl.

He must REALLY love her.

Glogirly really loves Gloman too. Somedays I actually think she loves him as much as me. She's told me the story of how they met probably a hundred times. I don't know how much that is really. I'm a cat and I can't count. But trust me, it's alot.

Here's their story -

Glogirly met Gloman by accident one September day fourteen years ago. She was moving and needed a bed. Apparently the house she was moving out of was teeny tiny and when she originally moved in, her bed had to be hoisted up onto the roof and pushed through the upstairs bedroom window. She's not very patient so when it came time to move out, she decided it was easiest to leave the bed behind. She had a friend named Nettie who knew of her bed plight and offered up an extra bed Nettie was storing in her garage. Glogirly happily accepted. All she had to do was stop by the duplex that Nettie shared with her husband and housemate and pick up the bed. Nettie told her that the housemate would be home to let her into the garage where the bed was waiting. So when moving day came, Glogirly arrived at the duplex with the two-men-and-a-truck she had hired to help. She climbed the steps up to the door marked 3440 and rang the bell. When the door opened she saw Gloman for the very first time. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and Glogirly was looking deep into Gloman's eyes. She said something boring like "I'm here for the bed..." But all she could think of was how cute and charming this Gloman person was. And his voice...oh, his voice made her heart melt and her knees weak.

Back at the garage she made small talk, attempting to be clever and funny about the bed and anything else she could think of. Deep down she was terribly sad though. You see, Glogirly knew that she would be moving yet again later that month. But this time she wasn't just moving across town. This time she'd be moving to Detroit, Michigan. And Detroit was a long, long, long way from Minneapolis. She had accepted a job there and was planning on starting a new life in the motor city.

Gloman sensed her mixed emotions that day, even though he didn't know anything about Glogirly. He didn't know her favorite color. He didn't know she liked movies or popcorn or strawberry rhubarb pie. And he sure didn't know she was going to move all the way to Michigan. Gloman thought Glogirly needed a hug and so that's just what he did. Glogirly said goodbye and left with the two-men-and-a-truck and the bed. When she saw Nettie the next day Glogirly told her that she was sad. The bed was perfectly fine, but she was sad to have met someone so cute and charming and friendly right before she would have to move again. Nettie told Glogirly that was crazy...that she was bound to come back for meetings and projects and wouldn't it be nice to have a friend to go to dinner with. She told her to pick up the phone and call him. Glogirly knew Nettie was right. But she was too shy to call him on the phone. So instead she wrote him a card. In the card she wrote about how much she loved meeting him. She explained that she was moving away. She also said how much she would like to have a friend to come back to. Someone to have dinner with or go to the movies with. She mailed the card that same day. Then she waited.

Now the next part of the story is from Gloman's perspective. You see, he received the card a couple of days later. After he opened it up and read it, he thought about it and decided that he didn't want to appear too eager or desperate so he waited before he called her. He waited a good ten minutes or so. Glogirly's heart skipped a bunch of beats when she heard Gloman's voice on the other end of the phone. They met for dinner, and then another dinner and another. It wasn't long before Glogirly was head over heals in love. She said the hardest thing she ever did was leave. When they said goodbye and Glogirly drove off to Detroit, she cried the whole way there. all 712 miles. And I know she cried herself to sleep many nights after that.

Just as Nettie suspected, Glogirly got to come back for meetings and projects. In fact she came home almost once a month. Every time, she and Gloman would see each other and do fun things together. They went up to the North Shore of Lake Superior, they stood at the edge of the ocean at Big Sur, they stayed at cute and corny bed and breakfasts, they went to restaurants and movies and ate popcorn and laughed. They learned about each other's favorite things. And they learned what was important to each other.

Despite the distance, their love grew stronger and stronger.

Two years later, Glogirly found out she would be moving back to Minneapolis for another new job. More importantly she would be moving home to where she'd left her heart. Where she'd left Gloman. Gloman came to Detroit to help her pack. After the movers packed her stuff into the big truck, Gloman and Glogirly drove back home together in her Jeep. As they were leaving town, he looked over to her, held her hand, and said "happiness is Detroit in your rear view mirror."

Glogirly couldn't have been happier. Even though she would have run off and married Gloman on the spot, she knew that they needed more time. They needed to get to know each other all over again now that they would finally be living in the same zip code. She knew how special Gloman was to her and how she needed to be more patient than she had ever been. She knew she wanted to spend her life with Gloman and she wasn't going to do anything to mess that up.

So Glogirly and Gloman spent the next two and a half years doing what everyone who is in love should do. They ate pancakes on Sunday mornings, they went to the movies. They snuck away for long weekends at the lake, they went for bike rides along the river. They surprised each other with cards and notes and cute socks wrapped up with bows. They went to Target, the grocery store, the computer store. They even played foosball at the sporting goods store. They watched reruns of Seinfeld on TV and laughed at all the same lines. They celebrated birthdays, Christmas's and Thanksgivings. They helped each other and comforted each other when life was hard. They realized that although they didn't need to be with each other, they wanted to be with each other. So one Sunday Glogirly drove to the duplex to pick up Gloman for pancakes. She parked on the street in front of the duplex and walked up the steps to ring the bell. Just as she did, the door opened and there was Gloman. That's when he asked her to marry him. He asked her in the very place they had first met, years before. Glogirly threw her arms around him and said YES, of course. She was so excited she could hardly eat her pancakes that morning.

Just a few months later they were married on the banks of the Mississippi River with all of their friends and family cheering them on. Their wedding was nine years ago today. They had a big party at the townhouse we now all live in. It was scorching hot and 100 degrees. But the sky was blue, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. It was as perfect a day as the day they met.

Glogirly can't imagine life without her Gloman. He's her best friend, her companion in life (in addition to me of course.) He is her inspiration. She loves seeing and experiencing the world with him. Glogirly says she is a better person because of Gloman.

Gloman also likes to tell the story of how they met. When he tells it he adds just one thing though. You see, when he opened the duplex door on that September day fourteen years ago and saw Glogirly, he had a very hard time finding his words. He claims to have stumbled over them, barely able to pronounce his own name. Later that same day, when Nettie came home and asked him how everything went with Debbie. Did she get the bed okay? What did you think of her? He simply replied, "Well, I'm going to marry her."